Life goes on. This is the only reality I believe in. You can’t stop time by simply stopping yourself from moving at all, the world is too cruel to stop for anyone or to even care about anyone. If once in a while, it stops and allows you to take a look outside, observe its beauties, make connections and embrace its liveliness, just make sure you don’t forget it is all momentarily and what is temporary is nothing but an illusion.
However, in my life, I always ran, I kept running and running away from someone, from something and never dared to look back or stop. And then I took a sudden break and got so lost in the moment that the moment itself became a world from which I couldn’t escape. I lived there, it became my home, the place where I felt free. And then the world’s noisy bells started ringing and calling me, I didn’t want to get on the train again, didn’t want to leave that home which I had found after long long years of struggle but even that home started dragging me out. I guess after a certain period of time, all things lose their meaning. Things come into your life, to teach you, to make you feel okay, and to make up for your carelessness but these things are not forever. After they have done their work, they have to go, you have to be strong enough to let them go. Maybe the universe has only one piece of it and you’ve had your share, now it’s time for someone else to feel blessed, to take benefits. Don’t be selfish, think about others too.
If people have been there for you for s long time and suddenly they decide to go, let them go, they need it and you need it just as much.
And when you’ve finally decided to let go of these things, don’t think that you’ll never make connections again. I know it’s scary to detach yourself from things that mean everything to you, but once you’ve done so, don’t keep mourning over the vacuum that they created. Instead, fill in that vacuum with fresh memories, make new connections, be brave enough to make new memories and store the old ones in a box so you can visit them once in a while.
That’s life, it goes on, and waits for none but it does not forbid you from making occasional pauses. The only proof that you’re living is the freshness that every day brings. The rarity of life is it gives you the opportunity to love people. I don’t mean the same four or five people you have known since childhood, it means finding people to love and you’ll never find them all sitting around the dining table of your home. Some of them are waiting in the coffee shops, some are waiting in the street down the block, some of them are waiting in another city, another country and maybe in another universe. They are waiting to be discovered by you just as you are waiting to be discovered by someone. If you don’t go to different places every day, you will never know how many people are worth knowing and worth loving.
Change is scary but change is beautiful too. So, while it does bring immense pain to say goodbye. Think about the joy that your arrival will bring to someone’s face who has been waiting for a long time to call someone a friend and you’ll be that friend. Think about the new experiences you’ll get to live that you would have never lived otherwise. Think about all the people who will call you their home, and how many faces will light up by your presence.
Move, keep moving, keep running, stop occasionally, make memories, get attached to people and then when it’s finally time to say bye, say it with a smile on your face and start walking on the road of life again. Don’t look back, there may be certainty in the past but just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean you will live in it forever. Uncertainty makes life interesting; not knowing how life will end makes you want to reach the end. So, reach the end and don’t carry all the people you’ve known with you, just walk as a free spirit who loves everything that comes its way. That’s life, really.
It’s all pretty simple actually.
The writer can be reached at [email protected]

Shafiya Showkat